All stills from the author's student films made for "290," his class in Super 8 during his time at USC.

The Weather Diaries

by Camille LeFevre

Mixing Icelandic fashion, arresting photography, video, and lush installation, a new exhibit at the American Swedish Institute challenges viewers to rethink fashion as an art form and the relevance of designers geographically isolated from Western couture.

Look at her. Return her gaze. It’s difficult, in fact, to look away, so intriguing are the possibilities for narrative and discourse layered into her image.…

Melissa Haviland & David Colagiovanni, Pike Puht. Film still courtesy of the author.

NEMAA Artist Series: The Romance of the West

by Susannah Schouweiler

The Old West lives on in Kate Hartfiel’s paintings: silhouettes of horses and ranch hands at work, caught in a moment’s graceful gesture and set against wide open spaces rendered in swaths of rich crimson, ochre, and cyan.

The Old West lives on in Kate Hartfiel’s paintings: silhouettes of horses and ranch hands at work, caught in a moment’s graceful gesture and set against wide open spaces rendered in swaths of rich crimson, ochre, and cyan.…

One could be forgiven for making the visual connection between Andy Warhol’s candy-colored pop art and Wendy Red Star’s rez cars and houses series, but where Warhol created his images from a place of privilege, Red Star's vivid works celebrate the rural, lived material reality of some of the least-celebrated communities in the US.

Single, cut-out images of objects draw the eye first to their color and shape, and then to the arresting contrast with their matte colors.…